Controversial Catholic religious campaigner dies

A devout Catholic and high-profile activist, she had campaigned since the 1970s against what she described as the “deliberate destruction of the Irish Catholic Church”.

In 2009, it was claimed that a “Catholic right-wing organisation” had helped the parents in the Roscommon incest case to secure a High Court injunction to prevent the children being taken into care.

During the case, a HSE childcare manager told the court he had been contacted by a woman called Mina Bean Uí Chroibín around the time of the application.

She had said the family needed support rather than intrusive action by the health board. The childcare manager said he had no evidence she was involved in the application, but he suspected it.

At the time, Bean Uí Chroibín had insisted she had no involvement in the mother’s legal battles and that her name should not have been brought up in court.

In 1994, she insisted Scoil Paipin Naofa, a primary school housed on lands owned by her, only teach the traditional Catholicism of the Tridentine faith.

The dispute over religious education saw parents remove their children from the all-Irish school.

Bean Uí Chroibín clashed with the archbishop’s office after she allegedly banned diocesan advisers and authorities from becoming involved with the school.

In 1998, she was one of a group of protesters who disrupted a meeting at a school in Trim, Co Meath, where parents were being given details of a new relationship and sexuality programme to be taught to primary schoolchildren.

The HSE report into the Roscommon abuse case published in 2010 did not include any names, but it did refer to a “Ms B” who contacted the Garda shortly after the High Court injunction was secured in October 2000.

This woman told the Garda that anyone who attended a case conference relating to the family would be in breach of the High Court order. She said she was a teacher and that the family had stayed with her the night before attending the case. Ms B also wrote to the then minister for children asking that she write to the Western Health Board telling them to stop “persecuting” the family.